


foxgloves and figs

by tsunderestorm



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ficlet, Gift Giving, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22429294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: Ferdinand… smells good. Hubert hadn’t noticed it before he’d become a vampire. There is a smell - saccharine, like overripe fruit, his damned tea or his sweet, sweet blood… Hubert isn’t sure.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 8
Kudos: 112





	foxgloves and figs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ColonelSoapScum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColonelSoapScum/gifts).



> I asked for prompts on my [twitter](twitter.com/tsunderestorm) and Mason asked for ferdibert and the prompt "everyone thinks I should stay away from you because you're dangerous". How am I to resist the opportunity for the delightful cliché that is a vampire au?
> 
> Anyways, baby's first ferdibert, just for you! Enjoy, Mace! ♥

When Hubert offers Ferdinand a metal tin of tea leaves from the farthest reaches of the Eastern continent, Ferdinand’s heart flutters. It’s beautiful, designs of flowers entwined with halved sections of fruit, each delicate, tiny seed pressed forward from the metal. He’d bought Hubert coffee beans, once, before his turning, before Hubert traded the bitter taste of coffee beans for the metal taste of blood…

A different life, a different time. A time before Hubert had sold his humanity for Lady Edelgard’s sake, a time before the divide between them became a canyon, a cavernous maw that ate up any potential they may have had. But now Hubert is here, in attendance for the third time at one of Ferdinand and Dorothea’s once-a-moon masquerade galas, and he’s catching Ferdinand behind a tapestry, and he’s giving Ferdinand a gift.

“Everyone thinks I should stay away from you,” Ferdinand laughs as he turns the tin in his hands, fingers running over the dichotomous foxgloves, the ivy of eternal life, the pears, peaches, and figs like a bountiful harvest. “They say that you’re… dangerous.”

Hubert doesn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thinks, not unless it’s Edelgard. A quick glance shows that she’s across the hall, chatting with the party’s other host, swept up in the sumptuous silks and the musicality of her laugh. He turns back, and Ferdinand is staring, the _idiot_ , staring at this cursed creature of death and darkness, pale as the moon and bound to it.

Ferdinand… smells good. Hubert hadn’t noticed it before he’d become a vampire. There is a smell - saccharine, like overripe fruit, his damned tea or his sweet, sweet blood… Hubert isn’t sure. He’s wearing earrings that drips rubies; Persephone’s pomegranate seeds. Hubert could be his Hades, could steal him away from this life of gallant horseback rides through the picturesque countryside and masquerade balls with Dorothea by his side, partners in crime and pageantry. 

“Do you always listen to everyone else?” Hubert asks, an insult that escapes his mouth more in the form of incredulity. He knows full well that he is dangerous, that he was dangerous _before_ he’d been bitten and certainly was now. Unparalleled in the magic he’d poisoned his blood to perfect and master, transformed into a veritable force of nature with long fangs and whip-quick reflexes. He knows that he is dangerous, and that everyone else knows it as well, and some time not too long ago he would have loved to see Ferdinand flee in his wake.

Now, he wants to pull him closer.

“Heavens, no!” Ferdinand says with a smile that could melt a glacier. “I don’t think you’re dangerous at all, besides.”

“That’s where you’re wrong…” Hubert says. “I am rather dangerous.”

“Well, that may be so, but… a true noble cannot be afraid of danger! One must face it head on!”

“And will you,” Hubert asked, circling Ferdinand like a hawk, a vulture, crowding him in their small, private alcove behind its unicorn tapestry. A predator sizing up prey and finding it easy, he drawls, “face danger head on?”

Dear gods, his hair smells of perfumes Hubert cannot even recognize, and it’s heavy and _silky_ in his hands. It seems like the first thing he’s truly felt since the nerves in his fingertips were blackened and deafened. His neck is strong, and there is a mole at the junction of neck and shoulder that vexes and intrigues Hubert more than any insufferable stratagem ever has. 

Ferdinand hitches in a breath, bare shoulders tensing above the collar of his low-cut gown. “If it is required of me, yes,” he says, hand clutching tighter around his gifted tea tin as the other clenches, loosens, clenches again at his side.

“You are a simpering fool. I could kill you, right now, and be free of this horrid festivity before anyone could strike me to avenge you.” It’s an empty threat, they both now, with Hubert’s offering of peace in Ferdinand’s hand and the smell of Ferdinand’s blood settled deep into his senses, clinging tight there like some sort of lingering pestilence.

Ferdinand is unwavering. He tosses his hair over his shoulder, inclining his head towards Hubert with a smile that makes Hubert stop missing the sun. “I wish that I had known you would bring a gift… I would have prepared something in return. It is simply poor form to accept a gift with nothing in return, you see!”

Hubert laughs. “And what could _you_ , mortal, prepare as a gift to match this for me? A goblet of lifeblood, perhaps? Useless if not fresh from the source. You would find yourself unable to be so very macabre.”

“Perhaps…” Ferdinand begins, fingernail lifting the lid off of the tea tin only to snap it shut again. Open, close. Repeat. “Perhaps you would find it to be enjoyable… straight from the source, then. But… not too indulgent, of course! Imagine, Ferdinand von Aegir surviving the war only to be found limp and bloodless at a masquerade ball!”

Hubert imagines fastening his mouth directly over the mole on Ferdinand’s neck, imagines travelling up, up until his fangs rest right against the flutter of his pulse. Imagines sinking them in, letting them pierce his sun-kissed flesh like the skin of the overripe fruit he reeks of. Briefly entertains the thought of draining him near lifeless, turning him as he was turned, this ray of sunshine dragged down to the depths that is his domain below Lady Edelgard’s castle, and pushes it from his mind.

“A suitable gift, I would think, and one I shall accept,” Hubert acquiesces, and Ferdinand, the simpering fool, throws his arms around Hubert’s neck and _drags_ his mouth to his neck, swallows nervously before he urges him to begin.

“Take your gift, then, Hubert.”


End file.
